XADM: Messages Sent Through Internet Mail Service Contain UTF-8-Encoded Characters

When you send a message that uses UTF-8 (Unicode) encoding to an Internet recipient through the Exchange Server 5.5 Internet Mail Service and the recipient views the properties of the message in an e-mail client, the To, From, Cc, Bcc, or Subject fields may contain UTF-8-encoded characters that are not decoded.

The SMTP address of the sender may also appear in the From field with the following IMCEA encapsulation prefix string:

This problem can occur if you manually select the UTF-8 character set when you send messages through an Exchange Server 5.5 computer. This problem can also occur if you use Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA) to send messages through an Exchange 2000 computer and the Exchange 2000 computer routes the message through the Internet Mail Service of an Exchange Server 5.5 computer in the same site.

If the Exchange Server 5.5 information store uses UTF-8 encoding even though that type of encoding is not required for successful delivery of the message, the e-mail client that the recipient uses to view the message might not be able to decode UTF-8-encoded information.

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Exchange Server 5.5. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.5. This problem was first corrected in Exchange Server 5.5 Service Pack 4.